Posted
by
Soulskill
on Friday February 28, 2014 @05:27PM
from the does-this-mean-i-should-stop-throwing-away-my-cameras-after-one-use dept.

PainMeds writes "Magic Lantern is an open source 'free software add-on' that 'adds a host of new features to Canon EOS cameras that weren't included from the factory by Canon.' One of ML's newest features is a module named Dual ISO, which takes advantage of the sensor in some of Canon's high-end cameras (such as the 5D MK II and MK III) to allow the camera to capture an image in two different ISOs, greatly expanding the dynamic range of the camera, and bringing its dynamic range closer to Nikon's popular D800 and D4."

Magic Lantern is fucking awesome. It turned my Rebel T2i (550D) into something that I definitely wouldn't have been able to afford. If you own a Canon DSLR, you owe it to yourself to give it a try. You'll be amazed, confused, and then even more amazed.

That being said, the cameras mentioned in the summary cost more than all my lenses combined. Sounds like an awesome feature, but not one that will be available to casual photographers.

I'm running an old version as well. I've actually not even tried to record video with my T2i since I got it years ago, and after visiting the ML website just now, I'm surprised (and excited) to hear that ML is primarily lauded for its video recording features. Curious to see what makes it so awesome, as I really can't fathom what kind of features might apply in the video realm.

Unfortunately, Magic Lantern development for the 6D has been pretty spotty. An unofficial release is available; check out this thread [magiclantern.fm] for instructions/info. If you don't want to try on your 6D, definitely give it a go on a T2i. It's truly amazing software.

I use CHDK " Canon Hack Development Kit "I opted for a bridge camera as I couldn't afford a full DSLR so the bridge gives me DSLR capability full manual, etc, and with chdk installed I get most all the toys magic lantern has plus ability to run 3rd party scripts in.lua or.bas, but without insane cost of lenses

His point wasn't about zooming, it was about image quality. and i use to use a bridge camera (SX100 10x zoom) for the same reasons yourself especially the macro but after going DSLR about 4 years ago i cant go back to the noisy mess that are point and shoots. Funny thing is i thought the images from the powershot were great until i started shooting with a DSLR. even the kit lens would give cleaner and sharper images.

Magic Lantern is fucking awesome. It turned my Rebel T2i (550D) into something that I definitely wouldn't have been able to afford.

Have you actually used a prosumer or professional camera? Firmware won't turn your pentamirror viewfinder into a pentaprism. It won't give you an extra command dial that really helps when you're using manual exposure and/or flash. It won't give you a top LCD that you can read while you adjust your settings in direct sunlight. It won't give you additional cross-type autofocus

I'm not being a dick or an elitist. I'm simply trying to point out that firmware replacement won't get you the equivalent of a more expensive camera. The hardware additional features are things that really do matter when you're taking photos in challenging conditions:

A pentaprism viewfinder is brighter and easier to focus with in low light than the pentamirrors used in low-end DSLRs

Memory card failure happens - having images written to two cards simultaneously can save you

while you may be right, you would be using the wrong tool for the job if you tried it like that. Of course firmware won't weatherproof your camera, nobody claims it will. HOWEVER, hardware is not the only thing being upgraded as you go up the line from rebels up to X-D, software is also being upgraded and in some cases if you want a particular software feature, you have to get a higher end body. This is what magic lantern addresses at its core and then adds on additional software features.

My crappy old Nikon D70s, consigned to the junk heap, says they could do better on build quality and components.

Consumer line = consumer quality.Should have opted for the D700.

Odd that. I could drive nails into a board with my old FE II and it would still work like a Swiss watch. It's been banged up and struck rocks while hopping to a better vantage (and slipping) and all I ever lost as a lens cap. Consumer end back then was still quality. Now consumer is an excuse to use cheap parts. So much fail there.

Alternate line exposure is not new, it is in a lot of current generation sensors. Omnivision, Sony and Toshiba all have sensors out with this capability.

The underlying issue is that when doing alternate line exposure you are getting only half the resolution for each range. DSP and image processing techniques can help smooth out the issues, but you are fundamentally dealing with a half-height dark and a half-height light image. Depending on the alternate-line approach, you also get other funky color fringing issues due to the underlying bayer pattern. As the article notes, there are color fringing issues

A good generalized approach is to output a 1/2 resolution image in both dimensions, otherwise you will get a vertical stretch if you keep the horizontal width at full resolution. So it means for a 16 MP camera, you will get only 4 MP HDR images. In a lot of cases this will be more than good enough... But it makes it really difficult to sell and explain to users.

There is usually a good reason that advanced features aren't release/published. A lot of the time it comes down to features be sub-optimal on what is supposed to be a highly polished product.

Ah, this reminds me of another innovation that slashdot doesn't seem to have reported on yet:
"Corephotonics' dual-camera tech will change smartphone imaging [cnet.com]." It gives cellphones more telephoto capability by having a color sensor with a wide-angle lens, and a monochrome sensor with a telephoto lens. The idea being that you're more sensitive to details in luminance than chrominance. (In fact many image formats allocate more bits to storing luminance than chrominance). It also makes sense since the long

The underlying issue is that when doing alternate line exposure you are getting only half the resolution for each range. DSP and image processing techniques can help smooth out the issues, but you are fundamentally dealing with a half-height dark and a half-height light image. Depending on the alternate-line approach, you also get other funky color fringing issues due to the underlying bayer pattern. As the article notes, there are color fringing issues

Just that? If the camera is actually doing these two exposures simultaneously, I'd be worried about contrast. Better use a lens with good coatings and only few optical interfaces for these exposures.

Wouldn't you benefit from the opposite? A poor quality lens is likely to spread light over more than one pixel (not as sharp) and as a result the alternate line algorithm wouldn't end up with the weird fringing effects described above. Kind of like your anti-aliasing filter already does.

A poor quality lens (coatings- and surfaces-wise) can't achieve the same contrast in a single exposure. The optics involved is linear (like most optics in use today). Remember lens flares? Those interesting shapes are what a real world lens does to irradiation function shaped like a Dirac impulse (constant energy, arbitrarily low spatial angle). Now if you spread the energy across the scene (that's how most scenes without bright point light sources look like), what you get is effectively an infinite number

I understand what you're saying however qualitatively it doesn't seem to match the experience of people taking their $500 entry level DSLRs with plastic lens mountings, pointing them straight into the sunset and then bracketing the heck out of their exposures. The results always show increased dynamic range even from the most entry level kit lens.

We are indeed listening and making changes based on feedback, and at a faster pace now that most of the underlying engineering work is done. We'll put up another post in a week or two explaining everything we've changed.

In the meantime, if you want evidence, here's one example: load up the beta and look at the comments on one of the stories. One of the biggest complaints was that the comments field was too narrow because of the right rail (which was empty once you scrolled down a bit anyway). So we removed

Magic Lantern was the name of the first image projection system which was developed in the 18th century. This firmware was originally developed in order to exploit some of the untapped capability of the 5D2 video system, and since has expanded into enhancing still features.

I was a Canon man. But they have seriously dropped the ball in the image sensor department. They continue to use ancient sensors that simply cannot compete in today's market. I sold all my Canon cameras and lenses and moved to Nikon and could not be happier. I do not have to resort to hacks to get an image that is close to a Nikon image.

I was a Canon man. But they have seriously dropped the ball in the image sensor department. They continue to use ancient sensors that simply cannot compete in today's market. I sold all my Canon cameras and lenses and moved to Nikon and could not be happier. I do not have to resort to hacks to get an image that is close to a Nikon image.

This. I've always been a Canon guy, since I grew up on Canon gear, but in photographer communities I usually hear more stories of people ditching Nikon for Canon than the other way around. And frankly, I just like the Canon L-series lenses over Nikon lenses.

That said, Canon's sensor tech have been rather stagnant the last few years, it's needs some revitalization.

It goes back and forth.Canon got a lot of Nikon users when only Canon had full frame cameras.Nikon got a lot of Canon users (back?) with D3/D700/D300Nikon got some Canon users with the 14-24 f/2.8Nikon got some Canon users with the D800Nikon got some Canon users with better CLS/TTL flash systemCanon got many Nikon users for videoFuji now gets many Nikon/Canon users with X-trans sensor, good ergonomics and great lensesSony got some Nikon/Canon users with small cameras and big sensors, but lost them again with slow and expensive lenses and lack of supportNikon lost customers with sloppy quality controlCanon lost customers with not so good sensors

I ditched all three (yes, Nikon, Canon and Sony) for Olympus OM-D line. You get smaller, lighter, sharper and as good dynamic range in much nicer package. And you don't even need to lose in DOF as you can have f/0.8-0.95 lenses if wanted what are sharper than any Canon or Nikon lenses.And as for bonus, you get even much longer tele lenses than what you can have for FF department without adapters, like a 1800mm. And that in best stabilized body with a best sensor protection system and EVF what has no match f

Wut? Your EVF/OVF thing alone is all kinds of wrong. EVFs don't even have the dynamic range and resolution to match the sensors in the cameras, let alone a human eye with an optical viewfinder. Then there's the issue of sensor burn from bright sources because the shutter has to be open all the time. Have you ever tried focussing in poor light with an EVF? No fun at all. The noise and update rate suck more and more as the light gets more difficult. Speaking of update rate, try shooting anything that m

In the '70s when I first started shooting, I was a Pentax guy. Black-body MX with a winder, great assortment of lenses. Made the mistake of selling the whole kit to get in to a view camera which I was not ready for. Went through OIympus, Canon, I can't remember what all. Found out that whatever it was I was shooting in the late '80s needed a complete rebuild, was whining about it to a friend who was working as a studio assistant to a pro who told me that people were dumping Nikons for Canon Eos. After

Observer bias, don't worry though I hear the exact opposite. Typically one company will temporarily leapfrog the other. A lot of people ditched Canon when the D800 came out with it's stupendiously high resolution and fantastic low-light results, just like a lot of people ditched Nikon when Canon brought out the first DSLR with video.

The real winners here are those on a budget. There's a lot of fantastic second hand gear to be had on the market sold by people who think changing systems will make them magical

I really like the feature list it brings to the table and have thought about trying it out with my T4i for a while now. One question that isn't clear though, is there a "simple mode" for those times that I just want to pick the camera up and just go shooting or recording with basic automatic settings? I know there are times that I would like/need the features that Magic Lantern exposes, but I also know that I would miss shots or video moments if I had to configure 14 settings every time I wanted to shoot so

You know what would be nice? A good smarthphone remote interface for this, something simple, light, fast with low latency Wonder if it could be done with a EyeFi card? Hmm. Bigger screen would be nice. They have a USB PC interface, but it's cumbersome for field use. Beyond my coding skills for sure (sysadmin, not dev), anyone want to try that? I'm ducking as I say this, but I'm a Windows Phone type (Lumia 928, awesome camera that's not as ridiculous as the 1020)

Dynamic Range is not same thing as Exposure Range.Exposure Range is calculated in stops (EV) and it tells what can be difference between darkest and brightest parts of image where any data can be recorded, example D800 gives with a base ISO about 14.5 stops of exposure range. What means your landscape image can have details in bright clouds and then shadows under trees. Olympus E-M1 camera has 13.8 stops exposure range in base ISO. That is only 2/3 stops lower exposure r

Duh, it's a parody of a well-known work, at least well-known in Slasdot readership. I guess the next time I refer to the theory of relativity, I should refer to "on the electrodynamics of moving bodies".

A shootout of a 24MP APS-C sensor on a Pentax K-3 against a 24MP full frame Nikon D600.

"We figured the Pentax would do a good job, but we never imagined the results would be so outstanding. Our testing shows that the Pentax K-3 swept the Nikon D600 in almost every image we took. Even at high ISOs the Pentax held its own against the full frame sensor!"

Your single source is a review of subjective qualities *perceived* in JPG conversions from RAW files made by lightroom. All the review is about is what base curves and algorithms LightRoom applies to the RAW files, not about the actual quality of the RAW files itself, or the ability to make a decent image of said file with manual adjustments. Analogy: you are comparing the quality of JPG images an automatic scanner software generates from two different brands of 35mm film in a film scanner. These cameras ha

While I thought the results were cool, I was annoyed by the bloggers use of the word 'chromatic aberration' instead of color noise.

Chromatic aberration means the lenses bend different colors of light differently resulting in color fringes around the edges of object. Color noise which is observed in low-light conditions here is not an aberration effect of the lens, but pixel counting noise on the CMOS detector.

Still shooting TechPan and Ektar 25 from your freezer vault, eh? C&N(&others) have left all but the finest grain, slow films in the dust for years. If you shoot anything but base ISO, you should be shooting digital - or you're missing out on details you'll never get in even moderate ISO film. (And, yes, I still own an F4s film camera)

Since I cannot reply to all, I will just reply to myself and perhaps you all will read it.

Digital cameras do a fine job for pretty much all utilitarian photography and to deny that would be foolish.

Having said that, in fine art photography, images where you want a very large amount of latitude, and where color really makes a difference they all still pretty much still stand in the shadow of quality film and quality lenses. If I want shadow detail I have to have some camera that will take three different ex

Firstly this kind of technique can be applied in post processing with better results (not wanting to advertise but for example using photomatix [hdrsoft.com]) than can be achieved in the camera. In post processing this technique can be applied equally to Canon or Nikon or Sony or Panasonic (pick your favourite manufacturer) images, and really the only reason it hasn't reached Nikon/Sony/others in camera yet is that there isn't such a big firmware modding community following with Nikon/Sony/others. So Canon certainly ha